Recently, in connection with August 15th, two photos have been circulated on social media with the claim that they show an elderly woman going to Dhanmondi 32 with a candle to pay tribute to Bangabandhu.
See posts circulated on Facebook with this claim here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Fact-check
An investigation by the Rumor Scanner team found that the circulated photos do not show an elderly woman going to Dhanmondi 32 with a candle, nor are they from Bangladesh. In reality, these are photos of an elderly woman named Maya Rani Chakraborty joining a protest march in Kolkata against the rape and murder of Dr. Moumita Debnath.
At the beginning of the investigation, a reverse image search led to the photos in a post on a Facebook account belonging to Arpita Chakraborty. In the details of the post, the poster identifies the elderly woman as her grandmother (“Thakurma”). An analysis of the Facebook account shows that its owner is an Indian.
Notably, the same photos were circulated with the same claim around August 15, 2024. At that time, Rumor Scanner identified the claim as false and published this fact-check report.
